Egypt: Sadd Eddin Ibrahim has been freed

After spending most of the past 18 months in prison, Egypt's most prominent advocate for democracy and human rights, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, has been freed by the country's highest criminal court.

Ibrahim, a sociologist who holds dual Egyptian and American citizenship, was convicted and imprisoned for training his fellow Egyptians in voter registration and election monitoring - apparently seditious conduct in Egypt today. The Ibn Khaldun Center, which he founded in 1988 at the American University of Cairo, was one of the few independent research institutions in the Arab world.